The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced a priority testing programme of lamb dishes in takeaway meals after tests found evidence of lamb being substituted for cheaper meats including chicken and beef in almost one in three cases.
The restaurants concerned could be prosecuted and face fines of up to £5,000 if the meat has been deliberately mislabelled.
An FSA review of local authority sampling data, from July to December 2013, found that 43 out of 145 samples of lamb takeaway meals contained meat other than lamb. In total, 25 of these samples were found to contain only beef; chicken and turkey were also identified; but no samples contained horse meat.
The FSA is now launching a secondary round of testing with local authorities being asked to test 300 samples from takeaway restaurants and present the findings to the FSA from the beginning of May.
Similar data has been gathered during a Which? survey that found 24 out of 60 lamb takeaway dishes purchased from restaurants in Birmingham and London were adulterated with beef and chicken.
“Substitution of lamb for cheaper meats in takeaway food, as seen in our own data and the survey released today by Which?, is unacceptable and we are working closely with local authorities to ensure robust action is taken against any businesses misleading their customers,” said Andrew Rhodes, chief operating officer at the FSA.
”Prosecutions have taken place against business owners for mislabelling lamb dishes, but the recurring nature of the problem shows there needs to be a renewed effort to tackle this problem. Clearly the message isn’t getting through to some businesses,” he said.
Following the completion of the priority testing programme, authenticity testing of takeaway lamb dishes will continue as part of local authority sampling programmes.
